Based on Wajdi Mouawad’s play Scorched, the Canadian production Incendies (2010, directed by Dennis Villeneuve) is one of the best films I have seen in the last five years. The plot of Incendies moves back and forth between present-day Canada and Lebanon and the period of the civil war in Lebanon (while Canada is mentioned in the film, we don’t find a direct reference to Lebanon. However, we can infer the location from the textual details). With Oedipus the King and Antigone as its obvious subtexts, Incendies hauntingly explores how traumatic events endured during periods of war transmit themselves across generations. Incendies is, to use Marianne Hirsch’s term, a powerful exploration of “post-memory.” Like Oedipus, Incendies opens with a mystery that impels one of its primary protagonists to return to Lebanon and retrace the effaced signs of an unknown past. After the death of Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) in Canada, her children, the twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette), learn of her “strange” last request. Nawal wants her body to be buried face down until her children deliver two letters—one to the father of the children and the other to their brother. Both Jeanne and Simon are shocked by these disclosures as they hadn’t heard of their father or their brother before.

Spoiler Alert: The rest of the post contains many plot-sensitive details.